Why Syria's Fragmentation Is Turkey's Opportunity

By Soner Cagaptay and Parag Khanna

Demonstrators display Kurdish flags during a protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after Friday Prayers in Al-Qamishli. (Reuters)

One-and-a-half years into Syria's civil war, the latest chapter is the armed
hostility between Syria and Turkey, once a friend of the Assad regime. A century ago, it was Western powers that dismantled and carved up the Ottoman
Empire after World War I. Today, Turkey can place itself in the driver's seat of
shaping the borders of the emerging Near East map.

Syria's
slide into ungovernability suggests that, unlike Libya at the moment,
splintering and partition are increasingly likely outcomes, unless the Assad
regime falls. If the conflict in Syria continues unabated,
leading to full-blown sectarian war between Alawites and Sunnis, and violent
ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds, the scenario that is more likely to
unfold now is more along the Iraq model of de facto zones of semi-independent
control.

Aleppo
and Damascus would still likely be connected, though they would be pulled in
different directions thanks to countervailing trade links. There would be a
middling Druze enclave in the south. Alawites, or at least those who survive
the impending and unfortunate cataclysm, would retreat to their traditional
stronghold around the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

Most
relevant to Turkey is the fate of Syria's Kurdish enclaves. Somewhere between
10-20 percent of the Syrian population is Kurdish, creating a strong case for a
greater Kurdish zone of control and eventual autonomy together with fraternal
allies in Iraq, particularly given that the largest concentrations of Kurds in
Syria live in the north along the Turkish border areas and stretching eastward
towards Iraq.

What
is more, Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi Kurds (at least the ones that live in
Iraq's northwest, across the borders with Turkey and Syria) are linguistically
united. These Kurds speak the Kurmanchi variety of Kurdish, as opposed to
Iranians and northeastern Iraqi Kurds. They speak the Sorani variety of Kurdish,
which is more different from Kurmanchi than Portuguese is from Spanish.

Syria's
Kurds would likely turn to Turkey for support. They would appreciate Ankara as
a balancing force against Arab nationalism, a lesson they would fast learn from
the Iraqi Kurds, who have made Turkey their protector against Baghdad since
2010.

This
presents Turkey with a crucial choice. It has traditionally been hostile to an
independent Kurdish state or entity anywhere in the region, lest its own Kurdish
population make similar demands. But its calculus could be changed by the
prospect of chronically unstable Sunni Arab neighbors, and the need to counter
Iran's Shiite axis -- currently stretching from Baghdad to the Assad regime to
Hizbullah in Lebanon. The Balkanization of Syria presents a once-in-a-century
opportunity for Turkey.

There
are more immediate reasons for Turkish support of an independent Kurdish entity
in Syria. The shelling across the Turkish-Syrian border present an important
case for why Turkey might be better served by buffer states such as Kurdistan,
rather than the far-less defined geographic realities today.

Also,
with Assad's authority collapsing most rapidly in northwestern Syria, he appears
uninterested in preventing the usage of Syrian territory by the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) -- the militant group leading the fight for Kurdish
independence in Turkey and perpetrators of numerous terrorist attacks there. Thus,
Turkey ought to favor a new Aleppo-based government that seeks stability and
order on its territory and that would act more responsibly, as Iraq's Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) has, in reigning in PKK militias in northern Iraq.
Indeed, Kurdish self-defense forces from Syria are now receiving training from
Peshmerga forces in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Regardless
of the Syrian Kurds' ability (or willingness) to reign in the PKK, Syria's main
Kurdish political faction, the PK-affiliated Party for Democratic Unity (PYD), has learned from watching neighboring Iraq that Sunnis will likely unite against Kurdish
self-governance. Thus, ironically, while the PKK would continue to fight
Turkey, the group's Syrian franchise might decide to make friends with Ankara.

Furthermore,
as in Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish infrastructure companies would
be among the prime beneficiaries of investment in Syria's Kurdish region post-Assad,
winning major contracts, as they did in Iraqi Kurdistan after Saddam. Turkish
companies have practically built Iraqi Kurdistan, paving its roads,
designing its airports, drilling for its oil, and constructing its urban
communities -- not to mention being the necessary outlet for Iraqi Kurdistan's
energy resources. Similarly, it is a necessary trade partner for any landlocked
entity emerging in the post-Assad aftermath. Turkey's competitive advantage in
Iraq, as an advanced economy that lies next door, will be its advantage also in
post-Assad Syria.

In
light of all these compelling reasons to support an independent Kurdish entity
in Syria, Turkey may be convinced to reverse its long-standing opposition to
any Kurdish autonomy in the region. But one major roadblock stands in the way
of Turkey capitalizing on these developments: its own Kurdish population, who
has long been agitating for its own autonomy.

As
Turkey makes good friends with the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, it has to keep its
own disgruntled Kurds happy. Rising Kurdish nationalism across the region has
excited the country's Kurds. Turkey has witnessed a rise in PKK attacks
recently, with the group even launching a brazen, if aborted, fall campaign to
take over towns in the country's southeast. Politically, Ankara's failed 2009
attempt to provide more cultural rights for Kurds has added to
the their frustrations. Such sentiments will be voiced prominently in
the country's 2013 local elections, when the Kurdish nationalist Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP) will likely retain control of major cities in southeastern Turkey.

It
will be hard for Turkey to build a strong relationship with the Syrian and
Iraqi Kurds when Turkish Kurds are locked in a centrifugal tendency away from Ankara.
As it aims for influence in Syria and Iraq, Ankara has to make peace with its
Kurdish community. If autonomy is the way to resolve the Kurdish issue
in Iraq and Syria, in Turkey the path forward is more democracy. Currently, Turkey
is debating whether to write its first civilian constitution. This presents the country
with a timely opportunity to create a truly liberal charter that broadens everybody's rights, including those of
the Kurds.

Kurdish
nationalists have been suggesting lately that this is the Kurds' moment in
history. The Kurds may indeed turn the Middle East's post-World War I alignment
on its head, but they cannot do this without Turkey. This is in fact Turkey's
Kurdish and Middle East moment -- if Ankara plays its hand correctly at home.